Observer photog fired

[upthecreek]

In today's Charlotte Observer:

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/15141490.htm

Seems like drastic action taken for little or no harm done. But his earlier suspension didn't help.

 

[Flash]

Good Lord, for colour fixing? I've heard of worse ...

 

[SportsGuyBCK]

Good Lord, for colour fixing? I've heard of worse ...

Christ ... they fire their No. 1 shooter for THAT?

 

[Mystery_Meat]

The Queen City can sleep at night now. The evil of the Mad Color Fixer has finally been eradicated.

 

[spinning27]

That's a tough one.

I understand the Observer's policy and why it exists, but something about firing him for this particular action doesn't pass the common sense test.

 

[Left_Coast]

He did it once before and was suspended. Then he did it again. Perhaps after the first suspension he was told, "If you do this again, you're gone."

 

[HejiraHenry]

He did it once before and was suspended. Then he did it again. Perhaps after the first suspension he was told, "If you do this again, you're gone."

Yes, that would likely be it.

Not quite to the level of making up quotes, but manipulating images without clearly labeling them is a no-no in the photojournalism world.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Some of the previous altered pics:

http://zonezero.com/editorial/octubre03/october.html

 

[Left_Coast]

He's an idiot for doing it. After he was previously punished for it.

 

[Ace]

To me, this is just as bad as a reporter making up quotes because his man-on-the-street interviews didn't go so well.

Hey, didn't like the colors? Tough luck, guess you blew it.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

What he should have done is show the original to the photo editor and let it be his call on whether the color needed tweaking. Some papers tweak, some don't, but you don't take it on yourself, you let a manager make the call.

 

[Left_Coast]

Exactly.

And he admitted in his previous suspension he went too far

http://poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=47867

"I know that I probably went too far on some of my burns, and my paper has made our standards clear. I will no longer tone my background down that far."

 

[Songbird]

That is such horse****.

 

[fmrsped]

That's tough. ...

On a couple of those photos, the fire in the woods, I couldn't tell what he did to it.

 

[hondo]

He lost the original color when he "underexposed" the film? You mean Charlotte's not a big enough boy to be digital?

 

[Football_Bat]

There's got to be more to this story.

 

[Bob_Jelloneck]

I'm always saddened to see a veteran journalist lose his job.

 

[SF_Express]

Because he did it once and got suspended, he was stupid to repeat it. At the very least, he could have gone to a boss and said, "Here's the original print, and here's what I want to do to it." Why not be safe?

But this isn't as, ahem, black and white as it seems generally. He says he was trying to make the picture more like what he saw through the lensefinder; who's to know but him? And the sportsshooters.com board has a lot of people noting what a difficult call this can be.

But the previous deal put him in a tough spot, and he should have bent over backwards to do this the right way.

 

[Left_Coast]

Really, I think it is pretty black and white.

He adjusted/burned photos three years ago. The paper suspended him for it. He said he wouldn't do it again. He does it again. What's the paper to do?

He should have been working with a manager on this stuff, especially after it happened the first time.

I don't think the paper had a choice.

 

[SportsGuyBCK]

Here's a link to the message board posting about this subject on SportsShooter.com ... see what the photographers think about this ...

http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=21220